Re: The grace of God

: I am trying to find the meaning and origin of
: "There But for the Grace of God go I"

: The phrase appears on a list of proverbs at:
: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/proverbs.html
: but that page doesn't explain what each proverb
: means.

: Dave

Under different circumstances, you could be in the same sad shape as someone else. If you had bad parents like the person in question, for example, you could be in prison, messed up mentally, etc.

THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I - "On seeing several criminals being led to the scaffold in the 16th century, English Protestant martyr John Bradford remarked, 'There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.' His words, without his name, are still very common ones today for expressing one's blessings compared to the fate of another. Bradford was later burned at the stake as a heretic." From the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson, Facts on File, New York, 1997.